


We Can Make It if We Run

by rikyl



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: F/M, Season 2 AU, The Desert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-17 09:56:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1383250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rikyl/pseuds/rikyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny has an idea. It's either the best or the worst idea he's ever had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is part one of three. It picks up about six weeks after The Desert. Some stuff has happened since then, but none of it's based on spoilers.
> 
> Thank you to my lovely beta Diaphenia, who deserves all of the credit and none of the blame.

Danny stood outside of St. Paul’s after Saturday evening mass as the other parishioners poured out onto the sidewalk around him. He held an unlit cigarette between his fingers, fidgeting with the lighter.

He didn’t want to light it. But he wanted someone to tell him not to light it—to just swoop in and casually toss it to the side because she cared whether he was going to live to an old age, or at least whether his breath was going to stink when she leaned in close.

Not that she was ever going to do that again. He’d pretty well taken care of that.

The late April air was heavy with a rain that wouldn’t quite come, and it seemed to match the heaviness in his chest. He breathed it in deeply, reluctant to go home, where no one was waiting for him, and everything seemed marked by her absence.

As he lingered in the overcast twilight, a pair of pigeons caught his eye. The smaller one, the female, he guessed, was pecking around looking for crumbs or whatnot under a streetlamp, and her apparent suitor was hovering nearby, strutting and puffing out his feathers like he was trying to get her attention, as she persistently ignored him.

Danny laughed humorlessly, finally lighting the cigarette in his hand. “Don’t get your hopes up, little bird. She’ll just hurt you in the end,” he muttered.

“Oh, I think she’ll come around,” a voice said nearby. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of long dark hair on a female figure, and for a split second, he thought it was her, against all odds, but of course it wasn’t. It was just some woman, someone he vaguely recognized from seeing at church.

“Huh?”

“She’ll come around, and then she’ll be in it for—well, for life, really.”

Danny stared at the woman blankly, trying to figure out why this random person was suddenly trying to give him love advice, even as his heart quickened at the hopefulness of her words. But how could she even—?

“The pigeons,” the woman said, nodding toward the ground, and Danny felt sheepish. “Once they mate, they mate for life.” She smiled fondly at the birds, barely seeming to notice Danny anymore, and started to move away. “Loyal little creatures. Not like other birds.”

“Hey, I’ve said that!” he called out belatedly even though she was gone, and a few passersby shot him wary looks for his outburst. “I defend pigeons all the time,” he said, feeling an urgent need to explain his behavior to some guy who just happened to be within range. “I’m their biggest supporter. I’m just going through … I’m going through a thing right now.”

“Um … okay, man,” the guy said, backing away from him as quickly as possible.

Yeah, just going through something. Just losing his mind, Danny thought, wondering how he must look right now, hungover, unshaven, waving his cigarette around as he gestured at strangers in the gathering storm.

Maybe he was crazy. He had just thrown it all away, at the moment when he finally had everything he wanted. He should have been the happiest guy alive after Mindy ended things for good with Cliff and chose him, leaping into his arms and into his bed and into his life like this was what she’d been wanting all along too. Instead he’d gotten annoyed over things that didn’t matter, picked little fights instead of enjoying her, pushed her away when he should have been holding on for dear life. Why had he done that?

He knew why. He just didn’t know how to be any different.

Lightning crackled across the sky, and the pair of birds he’d been watching shot away, one flying close after the other. They landed on a ledge under an overhang, huddling close to each other, so he guessed that was a done deal.

“Idiot,” he muttered, berating himself for the ridiculous pang of envy he felt in his gut as he watched them, but the word had a familiar feel in his mouth that made his stomach twist. It was the word he was always throwing at guys who threw away Mindy. He always thought he’d be better than that. He thought that if he ever had the chance, he’d … 

That he’d—

Danny stilled as an idea started to form in his head. He couldn’t tell if it was the best or the worst idea he’d ever had. Probably the worst, but in his current state of mind it seemed like the only solution. 

He didn’t want to go on like this—that was for sure. He’d gotten so used to Mindy just being there, never more than an arm’s reach or a phone call away, and now she would barely look at him when they couldn’t avoid each other at work. It felt like more than losing a few-weeks-old relationship. It felt like losing a limb.

And they obviously weren’t going to be able to go back to being friends again. She was too angry at him, and why wouldn’t she be? With one impulsive move, he’d wrecked her chance to be with someone who she could actually see a future with. Someone who she didn’t have to sneak around with while she figured out whether what they had was “real.” Even if she’d take him back at this point, he definitely wasn’t going back to that uncertain purgatory.

And that only left—

It was crazy, and he didn't know if he could even talk her into it. But he didn't know if he could live with himself if he didn't try.

A rumble of thunder filled the street, and suddenly the sky broke open, unleashing the torrential downpour it had been holding back for so long. In seconds it was pouring, drenching him and ensuring the cigarette in his hand was never going to light again. 

Laughing, he tossed it into a bin.

He knew what he had to do.

\--

“Go. Away!”

Mindy’s voice blared through the intercom, and Danny punched the buzzer again, shouting over the steady downpour behind him. It hadn’t stopped raining in the hour and a half since he’d run home from church and then to her place.

“Mindy, will you let me up? I just—” The speaker crackled, but no response. “It’s important.”

A moment passed before the intercom crackled to life again. “Oh, now you’re talking to me? Now it’s important?”

“Yes.” He glanced at his watch. He had so little time to talk her into this if it was going to happen tonight, and if it didn’t happen tonight—somehow he knew that he’d think better of it by tomorrow.

He didn’t want to think better of it.

Lightning lit up the sky behind him, and he quickly pressed the intercom button so she’d hear the crack of thunder that followed amplified in her apartment. He felt a little low using the weather to manipulate her like that, but this was hardly going to work if she wouldn’t even hear him out.

“It’s a raging storm out here, Mindy! Would you let me in already?”

Finally he heard the click of the door lock releasing and reached for the handle. Skipping the elevator, he took the stairs two at a time up to her apartment. At her door, he quickly combed his fingers through his wet hair and took a few deep breaths, trying to steady himself. 

Before he knocked, Mindy opened the door, wrapped in a short robe. She had it pulled tightly around her, one hand clasping it together at her neck, which struck him as unnecessary. As if he didn’t know every curve and contour of her by memory already, and it didn’t stop him from taking in her bare legs.

Seeing them made him feel like an addict—an out-of-control addict who would do anything for his next fix.

“Eyes up here!” she snapped, blocking his way into her apartment. “Danny, you cannot just show up here like this.”

He put his hand on the doorframe so that she couldn’t close it without breaking his fingers. “Just … don’t slam the door in my face, okay? I have something for you.”

Before he could second-guess himself, he pulled the envelope out of his inner coat pocket and held it out to her. She just stared at it for a few seconds.

“Take it,” he said, his heart pounding against his rib cage.

Mindy narrowed her eyes at the envelope suspiciously, and he knew from the tense set of her jaw that she wanted to tell him to go to hell and never come back, but he also knew she wouldn’t be able to do that without knowing what was in the envelope first.

Rolling her eyes in submission, she snatched it out of his hand and peeked inside. 

He suddenly wished he’d had something more substantial to show her, like real boarding passes, the sturdy waxboard kind airlines used to use, the kind that felt like they could really take you somewhere and change your life. But he’d been in a hurry, and this was all he’d had time for, so the slightly damp printouts would have to do.

She squinted at them, her forehead crinkling in confusion. “Tickets to Vegas?”

“Yeah.” He looked at her expectantly, unable to form any further words of explanation. His mouth felt dry. “There’s um, there’s a hotel I booked too …”

“What, you didn’t have enough vices already, you felt the need to add gambling to the list?”

If by gambling she meant taking big, foolish chances— “You could say that,” he said under his breath.

He glanced past her into the apartment, at the mess of strewn takeout containers and ice cream cartons, and felt both stricken and encouraged that maybe she’d been as miserable as he had these past weeks since they’d stopped—

“Okay, whatever, Danny. I don’t want to be a part of your midlife meltdown or whatever this is. We’re not together, we’re not even friends anymore as far as I can tell, and you really can’t keep asking me to drop everything whenever you—”

“That’s not what this is.”

“Then what is it?”

Danny stared at her, realizing he maybe should have thought this part through more. He’d been so focused on the idea, he hadn’t given any thought as to what he’d actually say when he got here.

He’d thought it would be obvious. It had become so obvious to him what they needed to do, and he wanted it to be obvious to her too.

“Why does anyone ever fly off to Vegas on a moment’s notice, Mindy?”

“I don’t know. To blow a better-than-expected tax return. To see Mamma Mia in drag. To get married by Elvis.”

“Yes.”

He stepped forward, something like hope swelling in his chest, and she took a step backward, keeping some distance between them. The door swung shut behind him, with a loud crack that made her jump.

“You want to see Mamma Mia in drag?” Her voice faltered uncertainly, and her hand slipped from the top of her robe to reveal her collarbone.

Danny shook his head, and she looked away from him.

“You … you just got a check from the federal government?”

“No.” He took her hands in his and waited until she looked at him. “Min,” he said her name like a plea. “Come with me. Let’s just do it. Tonight, before we have a chance to think it through.”

Her eyes filled with emotion, before she dropped her hands from his and took another step back. “Right. Yeah. Because thinking this through—that would be crazy.” She waved the envelope in the air, accusingly. “Why are you doing this?”

“Do I really have to explain to you why someone would want to get married? It’s all you ever talk about.” 

“Yeah, I want to get married, Danny, someday, to someone, preferably with the face of Tom Hiddleston and the personality of Brian Williams. But that doesn’t mean you can just walk in here after everything, wave some tickets in my face, and expect—”

“Because I don’t want to lose you, okay?” It was hard for him to admit, but harder would be walking out of here empty-handed. This was it, he was going all in, and if it didn’t work, he was probably going to quit the practice on Monday and never see her again.

“You didn’t have to lose me. You broke up with me. You did that. If you didn’t want to lose me, then why—”

“Because I didn’t want to lose you,” he said again, and clawed his hands through his hair in frustration. “Later. Down the line.”

“Danny … ”

“Look … you know what my dad did to me. You know about Christina. What she … when she … it took me years to even … I can’t go through that again. I couldn’t keep dating you or sleeping with you or anything else if it’s not going to work out, because I know I couldn’t do it again. Not for you.”

“Then don’t,” she snapped, and he realized how the last thing he said sounded—how it might have sounded like she was less to him, when what she really was was more. “Just take your tickets and go—I don’t know, just be by yourself forever, I guess, if that’s what you really want.”

“That’s not what I want. I wouldn’t be here if that’s what I wanted.”

“Well, if you want me, you have a really strange way of showing it.”

“Hey, I panicked, okay? And I pushed you away. Maybe I broke up with you so that you could never break up with me.”

“Well, that’s dumb,” she muttered, swiping at her eyes.

“I know it is. But then I just realized—I realized there’s another way.”

Mindy folded her arms across her chest, more protectively than angrily. “Another way … meaning … Elvis?”

“Yeah, I guess. Maybe. I don’t think Elvis will actually be involved, but … look, I already told Betsy to reschedule our patients for Monday and Tuesday. I made all the arrangements. All you have to do is throw some things in a bag—a dress, or whatever you want—and everything is set.”

Almost everything, he thought, watching her anxiously.

“Everything is set,” she echoed. “Yeah, everything is set. Are you out of your mind? That’s crazy, Danny, you’re crazy. We hooked up for a few weeks without ever even talking about it, you broke it off with no explanation, you’ve barely talked to me or even looked at me since, and now you just expect me to—I don’t know, just fly away with you?”

He pictured the pigeons, cuddling on the ledge together last he saw, and felt how ridiculous it was. “Yeah.”

“Then you’re crazy.”

“You moved to Haiti with Casey when you barely knew the guy. How is this crazier than that?” 

“Casey and I had been together for three months when I went to Haiti. And he—”

“That’s bullshit. Okay, maybe we haven’t dated in the traditional sense. Maybe … whatever. But we know each other. You know me. You know how you feel about me. You don’t need three months of dinner-and-movie dates to figure that out. You either want me, or you don’t.”

He tried to ignore the fact that what they knew about each other might not necessarily be an argument in favor of this, and he hoped she would too, even as a pressure built in the back of his throat over the possibility she wouldn’t.

“That’s not fair.”

“That’s not fair,” he echoed her, disbelievingly. “You would have married Casey. You would have married Tom.” Or Cliff, he added silently, his stomach clenching.

“I lived with Tom. And anyway, he never asked, and you know that.”

“Well, I am. I’m asking. And I know I’m not perfect, but I am a hell of a lot better than that manchild buffoon, you have to at least give me that.”

Part of him knew he shouldn’t want it this way, that he shouldn’t be asking her to settle for him just because she’d been willing to settle for someone else, but he couldn’t stop himself. He’d seen her be stupid so many times in the past for guys who weren’t worth it. Why not him?

“Even if you were … so, then, what, I’m supposed to marry you because you’re better than Tom?” She huffed in disbelief. “This is the worst marriage proposal in the history of the world!”

He flinched at that, because it was true. On the way over here, he’d pictured this as romantic … he’d pictured sweeping her off her feet, like a scene from one of those movies she liked so much, but here she was standing her ground, and he couldn’t even begrudge her for it.

“I suppose you’ve had better,” he said, and it didn’t even come out sarcastically.

“Casey made me climb a tree,” she admitted, looking at the space between their feet, her voice smaller. “And he may have implied things about my body type.”

She deserved so much more.

“I would never make you climb a tree,” Danny said, feeling like there wasn’t a lot he could promise her, but he could sure promise that. “And I wouldn’t—”

She put her hand up. “I know. Stop.”

“Okay.”

They stared at each other for a long, suspenseful moment as the rain beat against the window. He felt drawn into her eyes, and he felt like he saw remnants of the warmth he was used to seeing there. She knew him. She knew that he could be better than the person he’d been lately—or at least he hoped she did.

“What if I said yes to this?” she asked finally. “Some proposal story. What would I even tell our children?”

“Our children?” he echoed, not really processing the concept as he zeroed in on the word yes.

“Yes, Danny, the children we would have together if we were married. Have you not thought this through at all?”

The fact that he hadn’t probably should have given him pause, but the fact that she evidently had thought ahead that far—about him, about a future, a future for them, however it looked in her mind—he grabbed onto the idea and rushed forward. 

“I don’t know. Tell them … tell them I whisked you away. Tell them I couldn’t live another minute without you, that I needed to know you’d be mine, forever, no matter what. Tell them whatever you want … who cares. If they exist, that means we made it, right?”

She lifted her eyes to his, wide and vulnerable and surprised, and searched his face. “Is that true?”

He didn’t even know which part she was referring to but it didn’t matter. It was all true. “Yeah.”

“You love me?”

“Yeah.” It felt strange and potentially catastrophic to admit, even to himself, but he forced himself further out onto the precarious limb, the one he’d been avoiding for weeks. Months, maybe. “Yeah.”

After a stunned moment, she sprang forward and shoved him hard in the chest. “You idiot!” But her hands stayed where they landed, balling themselves in his shirt. “You could have said so.”

His breath shuddering, Danny let his hands fall on her upper arms, stroking them tentatively, checking to make sure she was really there. “Yeah … ” His voice came out hoarse and seemed stuck on the one word. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, I guess I could have led with that.”

“How would this even work?” Her voice was quiet now, emotional, as she squinted at him from closer range. “We’d fight all the time. We’d probably try to kill each other every other day.”

“Probably,” he said quietly, daring to hold her a little tighter. “But … every other day we’d make up.”

“How do you know that?” Her voice was small and open now, like she wanted to believe it as much as he did.

And he didn’t, really. They were so different. She wasn’t who he ever pictured falling for, and he knew pretty well he wasn’t her idea of a soulmate. She’d been making that clear for years. It was part of the perfect storm of panic he’d felt when they were finally giving it a try.

“Because we’d have to. That’s the idea.”

The whites of her dark eyes inflated, like a light was coming on. She turned her face into his chest, and he held her there, stroking her hair, grateful to have her back, wondering if this was his answer. But he could practically hear her thinking, feel the whir of her cranium against his heart, and he didn’t know.

Suddenly her head jerked back and she shoved him away again, taking off across the room.

“Where are you—”

“I have to pack!” she called back to him, halfway to her bedroom.

In a daze, unsure if what had just happened had really happened, he followed her. On his way to her bedroom, he stepped over a random pile of laundry in the middle of the floor and automatically flipped off an unused light as he passed her bathroom. 

He found her in her enormous closet and watched as she threw a bunch of random, unnecessary-looking things across an oversized suitcase.

She was packing. To go with him. To a wedding chapel in Vegas. Suddenly things that had seemed like treacherous obstacles in the throes of uncertainty seemed minor and inconsequential.

After a moment, Danny looked around at the colorful mess and wondered fleetingly where they’d live when they got back. There were so many big unanswered questions, but he didn’t ask any of them out loud, or even dwell on them more than a few seconds. Did it matter? He and Christina had done two months of Catholic marriage prep courses, and where had that gotten them?

“Do you like this one?” Mindy was holding up something silver and sparkly that looked like a variation of all the other sparkly dresses she liked to wear.

In his mind’s eye he saw Mindy in that dress, walking toward him. “I do,” he said.

Mindy’s eyes flew up to his at the words, which he realized belatedly had some significance. She dropped the dress into the suitcase, her eyes shining, and then crossed the floor until she was standing in front of him. Just as he was going to pull her into him and kiss her, kiss her like he’d been aching to kiss her lately, she put her hand on his shoulder and pressed down.

“Get down on your knee,” she said.

“Oh.” He did it because she asked, even though it felt ridiculous. “Really?”

“Yeah, really. Come on, Danny, if we’re going to do this, you have to at least ask the question.”

He took her hand in his and almost laughed at the absurdity of it. It was so un-them, and he felt abruptly self-conscious of the gaping difference between what they were and what she wanted. 

“I looked up chapels, you’re already packing … we’re doing everything backwards.” It was almost like giving her an out, only he wasn’t planning on letting her go.

“Backwards and inside out and sideways—it sounds like a new dance craze. You couldn’t ever just ask me out like a normal person.” But she was smiling down at him, and she looked happy, and that look was all he’d ever wanted.

Unable to resist a second longer, he reached for her waist, pulling her down and against him. Her face was inches away from his now, her body flush against his, and it was so much better this way, with her close to him. He’d been in agony these past few weeks without having this. And Mindy’s eyes were looking into his so full of emotion that suddenly this moment didn’t seem like a silly formality. It seemed more important than anything he’d ever done, and it took his breath away.

Maybe he was better than better-than-Tom. Maybe she actually loved him back. Maybe this was the best idea of his life, or maybe they were going to be a disaster, but he didn’t even care.

“Would you marry me, Danny?” she asked, before he had the chance to form the words.

And suddenly he knew why women made such a big deal out of being proposed to. His heart grew three sizes in half a second. “Yeah.” His voice broke on the simple syllable. “Yeah.”

He kissed her then, crushing her to him, pushing her robe off her body in a frantic need to be as close to her as possible.

If they spent fifteen minutes rolling around on her closet floor instead of packing, he figured, they could still make their flight.

He didn’t care what she wore anyway, as long as she was going with him.


	2. Chapter 2

Mindy burst out of her apartment building at full speed, Danny following close behind with his hand tucked in hers, and stopped short of stepping into the wall of water falling in front of them. 

“Umbrellas!” she shouted, in a total panic because honestly it felt she was forgetting a lot more than an umbrella, but Danny blocked her,  quickly shrugging off his jacket while saying something about making their flight.

“Just take this, put it over your head. Okay?” She hesitated, and he pushed it at her with a lopsided smile that made her feel woozy inside. “I’m already wet.”

She accepted it dazedly, staring at him, like who even was this person? And he stepped out from under the overhang to hail a taxi, which seemed to magically appear as if it had been waiting for them just off-set. Danny pushed their bags across the seat and then held open the door and waved her in, seemingly oblivious to the rain dripping down his face, and it seemed so romantic, she could hardly believe this was her life. That this was  _ him _ .

She ran the short distance across the sidewalk, trying to look like she was too in love to care too, even though it was cold and her hair was totally going to frizz like a madwoman after this. As soon as she was inside, he slid in beside her, grinning.

“JFK,” he told the driver, and then put an arm around her, his hand falling snug against her hip as he pulled her against his side.

She turned her face toward his and tried uselessly to brush some of the raindrops away.

“You couldn’t have had this idea on a sunnier day?” she teased.

He blinked at her. “Rain is good luck for a wedding, right?”

Her heart skipped a beat at actually hearing him say the word.  Wedding . She’d spent most of the day in a nightshirt, eating two-day-old Chinese food and watching TLC, and now suddenly this could be her wedding day. To Danny Castellano? She could not believe it.

No, seriously, she was having a little bit of trouble believing it. 

“You’re taking me to the desert,” she pointed out. “It probably won’t be raining there.” It felt a little like testing him … just the faintest suggestion that this might be a bad idea, to see if it would faze him, but he only shrugged, leaning into her hand in his hair while she looked at him.

His features looked strange, softer, more boyish, and she had the fleeting feeling of not recognizing him, which was an odd sensation to have about someone she’d just agreed to marry. But his gaze was warm, and his body fit just so against hers, and maybe she was still on the high of romantic proclamations and great sex, but she liked this feeling.

His hair was practically dripping now, even wetter than it had been when he’d shown up at her door looking a bit like Matthew MacFadyen as the third-hottest Darcy (after Colin Firth, and then Colin Firth again, obviously)—only shorter and more Italian and maybe a little hungover. Unable to keep her fingers out of it, she tousled it and combed it back into place and tousled it again. He blinked, only looking slightly annoyed, which for him was practically happy.

The rain had put a chill in the air, and suddenly she wished they were back at her apartment, snuggled under the covers like normal people, and she wondered why they were running away like this tonight. She was known for moving fast in relationships—too fast, she’d been told more than once—but this was quick even for her. They’d barely even been together yet, and when they were, she’d been deliberately holding back so as not to put that pressure on them.

Then again, she had ended things with Cliff to be with Danny, and she’d been ready to move in with Cliff, so by the transitive properties of … something … she must be ready for all that with Danny, right?

“You okay?” He rubbed her arms. “You have goosebumps.”

“Just a little cold,” she said, reluctant to say any of the rest of what she was wondering out loud.

“I wish I had a dryer coat to offer you,” he said, looking more distraught over it than it really seemed to warrant. 

He pulled her even closer, rubbing her arms, and she felt suddenly warmer, and calmer than she had been since he’d shown up. His concern for her was such a little thing, but it was the kind of little thing she’d grown so used to these past couple years of being his friend, and she’d missed it more than she would have expected.

_ Like the deserts miss the rain _ , she thought, almost tearing up at the thought of the song she’d been playing on repeat for weeks.

“It’s okay, I’m good,” she said, looking at the downpour against the window, then back into the warmth of his eyes. “I’m really good.” 

\--

They made it to the plane at final boarding and were almost the last people to get on. Mindy held back in the aisle as Danny arranged their bags into the carry-on bin, taking the opportunity to openly admire his arms and back.

She noticed a woman getting into the row behind theirs was pretty blatantly checking him out too.

“My fiancé,” Mindy said, leaning in conspiratorially, because she was about bursting to tell someone. “It’s okay, you can look. He’s a doctor, too, you know. He’s not just a bod.”

“Really,” the woman said, shooting an impressed look at Danny and then a much more skeptical one toward Mindy. “He’s your fiancé, you said?”

“Okay, that’s not … I’m a doctor too, and much younger than he is.” Mindy noticed the woman peering nosily at her hand before sliding into her seat. Annoyed, she couldn’t help popping up again to look back over the seat. “Not everyone wears a ring! And anyway, there wasn’t time. It was a very last-minute, spur-of-the-moment … thing. We just decided, what like, an hour ago, right, Danny?”

Danny was lowering himself into his seat next to her. “You mean when you asked me to marry you? Maybe more like an hour and a half.”

She punched him in the arm. “Whoa, hello. Suddenly this is my idea?”

“Well, you did ask. You seemed pretty enthusiastic about it, too. ” He smiled at her crookedly, his eyebrows raised suggestively, and she flushed, but she refused to be distracted by memories of the sounds she made when he’d been—anyway, that was so not the point.

“That is not how it happened! You can’t go telling people that’s how it happened. This was your idea. You were the one who was suddenly so overcome with passion and emotion, you ran to me in the rain.”

Instead of agreeing with her immediately and wholeheartedly, as she would have liked, he just looked at her for a moment, with that little crinkle he sometimes got between his eyebrows. “Okay, it was all me,” he finally agreed, sounding less than ecstatic about it. And what was that all about?

The seatbelt light went on, and they both fiddled with their buckles for a second, Mindy replaying the scene from her apartment over in her mind, uncertainly.

“That’s how it happened, right? You proposing to me, I didn’t just conjure that up in my head after watching too many episodes of  _ Say Yes to the Dress _ . You had tickets already.”

Come to think of it, she had made him get down on his knee and then in her excitement, blurted out the question herself. But he was the one who brought it up. He had the tickets.

“No. I mean … yeah. What was the question?”

Mindy squinted at him, trying to figure out if she should leave it alone. “You ran to my house in the rain.”

He nodded, and she watched the muscles of his throat as he swallowed.

“Because …” she waved her hands, indicating he should fill in the blank, preferably with words about his feelings, something more explicit than just grunted agreement with whatever she said.

The captain’s voice came over the intercom, and Danny looked straight ahead. He was gripping the armrests, and she couldn’t tell if it was because they were about to take off or because … she didn’t want to think about why else he would look like that at this moment. But then again not much Danny had done lately had made much sense to her.

“There were some pigeons,” he finally said, after they had started taxiing.

“Pigeons?” she echoed, having no idea what he was talking about.

The plane was barreling down the runway at full speed and then lifting into the air. Mindy felt her stomach drop, the vague and uncomfortable sensation of things being in motion when she still didn’t fully understand why.

Danny shifted beside her as they started to level off and wrapped his fingers around hers on the armrest. “After mass tonight, there were these two pigeons on the sidewalk. The male pigeon was pursuing the female pigeon, and then … you know, they took off together.”

“Okay … so you saw two pigeons fall in love,” she paraphrased, not sure what he was getting at.

“I don’t know if pigeons really fall in love. They’re birds, right?” He shrugged. “But they mate for life.”

“So you think the birds were … what, like, some kind of sign?” It wasn’t the effusive profession of everlasting love she’d been hoping for, but she guessed it was romantic, in a quirky sort of way. She could maybe work with that.

“... sort of.”

“Danny, you believe in signs? That is so Catholic. I always liked the idea of it, but you know, we’re scientists, so. But if that’s your  religion ...”

“What? That’s not my … They were pigeons. Just normal New York City pigeons, doing their thing.”

“It’s okay, I’m not judging you. It’s kind of cute,” she reassured him. Maybe Danny was just embarrassed about this weird bird mating sign thing, and that’s why he’d hesitated to own up to it at first. “You’re like Salma Hayek trying to figure out if she wanted to be with Chandler. Were you lighting candles?”

“What?”

“In the movie,  _ Fools Rush In _ . Have you seen it? Of course you haven’t seen it.”

“No, I haven’t heard of it.”

“ _ You are everything I never knew I always wanted _ ,” Mindy quoted in a dramatic voice.

“I am?” He looked over at her, his eyes wide, his mouth partially open.

“It’s what he says to her when he talks her into marrying him.” Now that was a marriage proposal.

“Oh.”

She kind of hoped Danny would take the hint, but he had looked away from her again.  

“See, Salma has a one-night stand with Chandler. Not really Chandler. I don’t remember the character’s name, but it’s Matthew Perry, Chandler from  _ Friends _ . You’ve seen _Friends_ , right?” Danny nodded just slightly, in a completely unconvincing way, and for a moment she couldn’t believe she was going to marry this guy who maybe hadn’t seen  _ Friends _ . “Anyway. She gets pregnant, so they run off together to get married, in Vegas. Actually, this is just like that. Only we were together for seventeen nights, and we were friends before that, not strangers. And I didn’t get pregnant.”

So all in all, this was a much better idea, Mindy thought, just before sucking in a breath as something occurred to her. “Oh my god, Danny, you know I’m not pregnant, right?”

He turned to stare at her, his eyes flicking down to her stomach, which she patted self-consciously. “I assumed. You would tell me something like that.”

“I’m not. Not that I know of.” She quickly counted back her cycle days in her head, hoping Danny didn’t know something she didn’t, because he was totally the kind of guy who would marry someone out of obligation, and that’s not how she wanted to do this. Probably. Actually, maybe, if the feelings were there and the baby was just a way to hurry everything up and get to the good stuff … but the math didn’t add up anyway. “I’m not.”

“Okay.”

She couldn’t quite let go of the idea, though. Not the pregnancy thing, that obviously wasn’t a factor in their case, but she couldn’t help but think there was something else going on here to explain Danny’s sudden change of heart.

Mindy gasped and grabbed Danny’s arm, causing him to jump a bit. She had thought of something that would explain everything—not just tonight, but their entire disastrous seventeen-day relationship.

“Danny, are you dying?”

“What? No!”

It would be just like him to deny it, all stoic while he was secretly suffering, though. “You would tell me if you were?”

“Of course I … I’m not dying. Stop being ridiculous.”

Mindy subtly slid her thumb to his wrest to check his pulse. It was maybe a little quicker than usual, but nothing noteworthy. He looked pale—tired maybe—and she wondered who had been taking care of him since the breakup, if she hadn’t. But he’d seemed as fit as ever back in her closet tonight.

“It’s not ridiculous. I just needed to know. It’s a valid question, considering.”

“You worried I’m going to widow you? I’m not that much older than you.”

“I would make a very hot widow. Although I don’t really care for black. If I didn’t wear black all the time, it wouldn’t mean I didn’t care.”

Danny shot her a weird, almost wary look. His hair had mostly dried, and he looked more like his usual self, which unnerved her. His usual self wasn’t really the type to run to someone in the rain, or to make sudden romantic proposals.

Part of her wanted to keep prying, to get to the bottom of this whole sudden change of heart he’d had, but the rest of her was afraid of accidentally talking him out of it. They were on a plane. They were on their way to the wedding capital of the world. She was this close to having everything she wanted.

And it was really nice just to have him here sitting next to her. She squeezed his hand, looking for some reassurance.

“You okay there, babe?” It was the first time she’d ever called him that, she realized belatedly. They’d never gotten to the point of pet names, except that he’d always called her “Min.” She made a mental note that if they actually got married— _ when _ they actually got married, what was she thinking—she should come up with something new to call him, something that was only for Danny.

“Yeah. Yeah, I was just … just thinking it’s a really long flight.”

Five hours, plus whatever time it took them to get where they were going when they got there. Running away together was turning out to be a whole lot slower than she had pictured it.

“Are you going to read or something?” She hadn’t had time to grab any reading material, but maybe he had.

“I don’t know, maybe. I think I’m just going try to get some sleep.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re right, we should probably get some sleep. It’s after 11 now, and we’re going to get in at like …”

“1 a.m. local time. Three-hour time difference.”

“Right. Okay, um …” This was weird. They’d been on a plane together a few times before, but not since they’d been together. “Here, I’ve got it. Trade seats with me, Danny.”

“Trade seats with you?”

“Just trade with me.” They hadn’t been together long, but it’d been long enough that she knew exactly how to get comfortable on a couch with him, when they weren’t doing stuff, and this was almost the same. She got up and slid in front of him, while he moved over behind her, and when he put his hand on her hip, it sent a distracting little thrill through her body.

Quickly, she pulled a pillow and a blanket out of the overhead bin. “Here, put this against the window, and you can lean against it, and I’ll lean against you.”

“Okay,” he agreed, the lines in his face softening.

Mindy put the armrest in the middle up so she could scoot over, and he put his arm around her, angling his body so that it worked. She snuggled into him, arranging the blanket over them, surprised all over again about how well his body just molded to hers—no awkward maneuvering or gymnastics trying to get it to work. They just fit. She'd always pictured ending up with someone taller, but to be honest, taller had never worked for her like this.

Danny dropped a kiss on the top of her head, and combed his fingers through his hair affectionately, holding her against him. It felt good, good enough that she was able, for the moment, to stop worrying about either of them.

“I haven’t been sleeping very well lately,” he said close to her ear, his voice soft and gravelly like it always was late at night or first thing in the morning. She liked how it sounded. She liked that she knew how it sounded at those times of day.

“Me neither.” She tilted her head up to kiss him lightly on the mouth, wordlessly communicating how much she’d missed him, how glad she was just to have him back, and she thought she could feel him say the same thing back to her, in the way his lips lingered, in way he looked at her with his half-closed eyes.

She rested her face against his shoulder, and a few minutes later she could hear his breathing even out, and she could tell he was asleep. The slight rattle that used to annoy her filled her eardrums, but somewhere along the way it had become soothing. It was how he sounded when he was close.

She drifted off almost immediately.

\--

\--

Danny fought his way up through the fog of sleep, an unfamiliar roaring sound filling his ears. After a disoriented moment, he realized he was hearing the jet engines come on for landing. They were landing.

_ They _ were landing. There was a soft warmth pressing against his chest, and he brought his hand up, tentatively resting his fingers in Mindy’s hair, feeling like maybe he hadn’t all the way woken up yet. He was having another one of those vivid dreams, where they were back on the plane from Los Angeles to New York, at the beginning before he messed everything up.

He looked around the cabin just in case, and it wasn’t the same plane. They were in different seats. Everything looked real. Everything looked very real—including the woman who was starting to stir slightly against him.

His breath caught in his chest as his eyes focused on her, and the relief he felt took his breath away. It was like waking up from a Mindy-less nightmare to find she out she was here with him after all.

Only  _ here _ was … where was here?

The plane’s descent sharpened as it all came flooding back to him, and his stomach dropped. He remembered asking her to marry him. He remembered all the twisted logic that had made sense to him in a blur of dehydration and heartbreak. And she’d gone along with it. He couldn’t think why she would—

That wasn’t true. He could think of a dozen reasons why Mindy would agree to something like this—several of which he’d helpfully pointed out to her last night. But none of them were  _ good _ .

As he tensed, she lifted her head slightly. “Are we here?”

He wondered if she was awake enough yet to know where  here was, if she was seconds away from coming to her senses

“Yeah, um, I think we’re landing soon,” Danny said.

She nodded, looking sleepy and content, and not at all disturbed by where or on whom she was waking up. He couldn’t help but smile at her and drop a kiss onto her forehead. She felt good, and maybe this wasn’t the best way to go about this, but at the moment he wanted so much for this to be real. He wanted a million more mornings like this, waking up with her body curled against him and her sleepy smile, and he wondered why they couldn’t just have that.

Maybe she had her reasons. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing to go through with this. At any rate, he couldn’t fathom the sort of colossal asshole he’d have to be to bring her here only to back out. It wasn’t an easy cliff to step back from once he was on it.

Unless she was the one to back away from the edge first.

The idea made him flinch.

The plane engines roared as they approached the runway. Danny held her close and tried not to think about the fact that they were literally coming back down to earth.

\--

\--

Mindy squeezed Danny’s hand in the back of the cab, trying to regain that giddy feeling from the night before. Or earlier this same night, she supposed, but somehow it had already taken on that surreal quality of something that had happened long ago, in a faraway place, with an entirely different-seeming person.

Danny was being quiet, and she couldn’t tell if it was because he had just woken up or if was because he had just … well— _ woken up _ . As in, the way a person does the next morning, sometimes, after a night in which they said or did things they wouldn’t normally do or that maybe they wish they hadn’t. Not that she had a ton of experience with that sort of thing, or anything, but … it was a thing. That could happen sometimes, to other people.

Then again, it couldn’t be the next morning if it was still the same night, and he had run to her in the rain. Guys didn’t do stuff like that unless they meant it, right?

When she’d woken up this morning (yesterday morning?), she could have sworn she hated him. She’d never really hated him, of course, but she told herself she did—for ruining her chances with someone decent when he didn’t even want to be with her. For being the guy who knew her better than anyone and rejected her anyway.

And when he’d come back … it wasn’t like those feelings had gone away, they’d just swung in the opposite direction, to something completely different but just as strong. He was the guy who knew her better than anyone and wanted to marry her. It was a realization with magical, transformative, landscape-shifting properties. And just like that, she was back to picturing him on a soccer field with a bunch of kids around him (one of them shorter than the others, dark-haired and deceptively surly). She was picturing him making big family breakfasts on weekends, and doing the crossword puzzle next to her on the couch, the gray starting to come in around his temples.

It was cosmically unfair how that somehow made him better looking.

“Do they really need all these lights?” Danny’s voice interrupted her daydreams, or rather, middle-of-the-night-and-wide-awake dreams. “How does anyone ever sleep in this city?”

“Are you being serious?” Of course he was being serious. “I don’t see how this is any different from New York. Time Square, Danny. You’ve seen neon before.”

“Yeah, but you don’t  stay in Time Square. You  go to Time Square. I’m just saying, New York knows when to quit.”

Mindy snorted. Maybe he was going gray already and he was just hiding it. She put her fingers in his hair, checking the roots.

Nope. Looked totally natural still. Amazing.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She grinned at him, scooting closer.

"Who said anything about sleeping anyway? I can think of other things we can do in Vegas."

She brushed her fingers up and down his arm and batted her eyelashes suggestively. Technically, she supposed they had other plans tonight, but she’d been in close proximity to him for more than six hours now, clothed. Plane snuggling was good and all, she’d slept surprisingly well, but it was after 1 a.m., and the idea of getting him into a big comfy hotel bed? Almost as alluring as putting a ring on it.

“Yeah?” He looked at her mouth, blinking. “But I thought … I don’t know. Were we just going up to change, or …?”

“Oh, um. Yeah. You can help me change. Two birds, one stone, right?”

“Right,” he agreed faintly, but he looked more sweaty than turned on.

“You know I’m offering you sex, right?”

The cab driver cleared his throat. “You’re a hooker, lady? I don’t want any of that in my cab.”

“Are you kidding me?” Mindy leaned forward between the seats. “Do I look like a prostitute to you?”

“I heard what you just offered him.

She could feel Danny tense beside her. “Hey, that’s my—that’s my fiancée you’re talking to. Show some respect, man.”

Mindy whipped her head around at the word “fiancée” before catching the driver looking them over in the rearview mirror through narrowed eyes.

“Are you sure?” the guy muttered. “I feel like you’re trying to pull one over on me.”

Danny had gone from distant and dazed to all coiled potential energy in a matter of moments, and she felt like he might punch the guy if he weren’t driving. She put a steadying hand on his shoulder. “Hey, are we getting close to the hotel?” she asked the driver.

“About a block away.”

“Why don’t you just let us out here?” Mindy suggested helpfully. “We can walk the rest of the way.”

“Okay, lady, whatever you say.” He pulled the cab up to the curb. She quickly paid him and got out.

“What was his problem?” Danny sputtered on the sidewalk, surrounded by their bags.

“I don’t know. Do you think he thought I look like Julia Roberts?” Danny raised his eyebrows at her. “Okay, obviously I don’t look like Julia Roberts. But someone as hot as Julia Roberts.”

“I don’t know, maybe. I guess he thought you looked like someone who wouldn’t go for a guy like me unless I was paying you. Or something.”

Mindy squeezed Danny’s arm, and he relaxed a little as she smiled at him. “Danny, that’s so nice of you to say.”

Luckily, the cab driver hadn’t been lying, and they were at the hotel in minutes. Mindy hung back a little to admire the lobby as Danny went to get their room key.

“What do you mean you don’t have our room?” Danny’s raised voice reached her across the room, and Mindy hurried over. “I made a reservation.”

“What’s going on?” she asked the clerk.

“Ma’am—” 

“I’m sorry, did you just ‘ma’am’ me? Do I look like someone who’s old enough to be called ‘ma’am’? You know what, don’t answer that. It’s Mrs. Castellano,” Mindy said impulsively, wanting to seem extra-legitimate after that incident in the cab. “Actually, make that Dr. Castellano. Dr. Castellano-Lahiri.”

Danny shot her a startled look, making her feel like he'd caught her doodling versions of the name on her Lisa Frank notebook, inside a heart. And so what, maybe she had tried it out on the corner of a Bed Bath and Beyond flyer one morning while he was in her shower, before shoving it into the recycling bin. He was the one who'd wanted to make it official.

The clerk cleared his throat. “Okay, Dr. Castellano-Lahu …” He trailed off, becoming inaudible, and Mindy wondered it that was going to be too many syllables for people to remember. Why was Lahiri so much harder for people than Castellano? It was way fewer letters. “I was just telling your husband here that we have a no-show policy. If you don’t show up by 9 p.m., we are free to give away your room, and it’s been taken already.”

“He just made the reservation. Why would we be a no-show?” She turned quickly to Danny. “You just made the reservation earlier tonight, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And you told them we’d be getting in this late?”

“I don’t know. I just did it on the computer.”

Mindy frowned. Danny and computers were never a good combo—this was not looking good.

“There’s a box to check if you’re going to be a late arrival,” the clerk piped up.

“Oh, good, okay. Danny, you checked the box, right? Because you knew we’d be getting in this late.”

He bounced nervously on his toes. “I don’t remember there being a box.”

Mindy patted his back soothingly. “Okay, from now on, you be in charge of the big romantic gestures and smoldering, and I’ll be in charge of the logistics, okay?”

“I was in a hurry,” he defended himself. “I haven’t been sleeping well lately. There were endorphins from running … it’s all kind of a blur.”

She wondered what other parts of the night were a blur for him, but quickly pushed the thought out of her head. Putting on her sweetest smile, she turned back to the clerk. “Do you have any other rooms? Maybe someone else who didn’t show up. It’s our wedding night, you see.” Maybe this was going to be useful. Married people got all the perks, especially the newly married ones (or the almost-newly married ones—technicality).

“You and half the people in this hotel,” the clerk pointed out. “This is Vegas.”

Mindy deflated. After several more minutes of arguing with him, the best she could do was to get them the room of someone who was checking out early to catch a flight the next morning. But it wouldn’t be ready until 7 a.m. At least the clerk had offered to store their bags while they figured out what to do.

Taking Danny’s hand, she pulled him across the room so they could regroup. He squeezed his eyes shut and raked his fingers through his hair, which somehow still looked amazing after being rained on and slept on. How did he manage that? Even when she had super short hair, it took effort.

“I’m really sorry, Mindy. I don’t know what I was thinking. This whole thing—”

She hushed him and put her hand on his arm. “It was an easy mistake to make. And how would you know they were going to be such dicks about it? It’s fine. We’ll figure something out.”

He relaxed, looking at her gratefully—gazing at her, really, in a way that made her feel warm all over. Leaning forward, he pressed his lips to hers, lingering a moment before pulling back. Damn, she wished they had that hotel room.

“What was that for?” she asked him quietly, smiling against his mouth.

“Nothing. I’m just … just glad you’re here, is all.”

“Oh. Me too.” She smiled at him, pulling out her phone, one hand lingering on his chest. “I’m just going to get on the wifi here, see if I can find us another—”

“I’ve had enough of this!” A woman’s voice carried across the room, catching their attention. “I want  _ out _ .” A man was following close behind her as she charged across the lobby. The guy reached helplessly for her arm as she jerked it away and announced loudly to the clerk that they would need a second room.

“Whoa. Good luck with that,” Mindy murmured, even as she tried to eavesdrop to make sure the clerk hadn’t been secretly holding back an extra room that he could have given to them. But from the way the woman was arguing with him that didn’t seem to be the case. “Glad that’ll never be us again, huh?”

Danny didn’t answer at first. He seemed to be staring at the other couple, or the two people who were evidently not a couple anymore, but his eyes had gone out of focus like he wasn’t seeing them anymore.

“Danny?” She wondered if he maybe needed a stronger prescription than reading glasses.

His eyes focused on her again, and he caught her wrist in his hand.  “What if you didn’t get us another room?”

“Why wouldn’t we want a room? It’s the middle to the night.”

“It’s almost 5 a.m. in New York. I’d be going to the gym right now.”

“You want to go to the gym?” God, she hoped he wasn’t going to expect her to be up that early on a regular basis. Or go to the gym.

“No, of course not. My gym’s 2,500 miles away.”

As if his gym was the only suitable gym in the world. “Okay. You want to go see if we can find a showing of Mamma Mia?” she suggested helpfully.

He made a face, and she wanted to ask him about the other thing, the obvious thing, the thing that had brought them her in the first place, which had been his idea, but she really wished he’d be the one to bring it up.

“Or … you know,” she prompted him, but he just looked at her expectantly. Oh, fine, she’d be the one to say it. “We could get married.”

He had the nerve to look surprised. “Do you want to?”

“Do  you want to?”

He pushed his shoulders up and back down again, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Yeah, of course I want to. I mean, I brought you here. So obviously …”

“Obviously …” she agreed, even though it was way less obvious than it seemed like it should have been.

“Okay then.”

“Okay.”

Neither of them moved, and it seemed like some kind of weird standoff. And honestly, she didn’t know why this had to happen tonight. They could find another hotel, get some sleep, enjoy each other, find a chapel tomorrow. Or whenever. Would it be the worst thing if they just agreed to do this a few months from now, at home in front of their friends and family? It’s not like one of them was shipping off to a foreign country tomorrow or something.

“Our suitcases!” she blurted, as inspiration struck. “It’s going to be a hassle getting our suitcases back, and we won’t have any place to shower or change our clothes. So I guess we should just …”

“What’s wrong with what you have on?”

“What I have on? This is just what I put on for traveling.”

“You look good. You always look good. I mean, I get it. It’s not  _ scrubs _ .”

Mindy opened her mouth. She’d forgotten that she’d almost married Casey in scrubs. Of course Danny would remember that. “No, no, you’re right, it’s fine. Of course it’s fine.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, we can totally get married looked like this. Why not?”

He stared at her for a moment— _ gazed _ , and god it was hard to think straight when he looked at her like that—then made a motion with his head toward the exit. “I guess I’ll just, I’ll go get us another cab then.”

“Awesome. Try for a less offensive driver this time.”

So they were really doing this. She could really do this, right? She could just marry Danny in the middle of the night, wearing casual knit separates, in Vegas.

Maybe.

What were the chances they were going to be able to get a marriage license at this hour of the night anyway?

\--

Mindy stared down at the paper in her hand. She was a little disappointed to find out that Danny’s middle name was Alan, after his dad. Why couldn’t it be anything else—something she could tease him about? That was the whole point of knowing someone’s middle name, and it seemed like she was being cheated out of something.

“I can’t believe we were able to get a wedding license at 3 in the morning,” she mused out loud. Seriously, in what world did government offices stay open all night on a weekend? Only in Vegas, she supposed.

“Yeah, they practically distribute them from vending machines here, it’s so easy. Whatever happened to the sanctity of marriage? Ridiculous.”

“Hello, guy who just decided to elope ten hours ago. You’re really going to rail about the sanctity of marriage now?”

He shrugged sheepishly. “For us … sure, fine, we’re, you know,” he said vaguely. “But look at these other people.”

Mindy glanced around the waiting area of Big Bubba’s Wedding Chapel of Dreams, where they’d ended up because all of the semi-classy options book up at least a week in advance, and apparently they had to do this tonight for some reason. The people here looked like the cast of a really low-budget indie movie.

“That couple,” Danny started nodding toward various people in the room, narrating in hushed tones close to her ear, “drunk and disorderly. Those kids over there? Should obviously be home with their parents doing their homework because it is way after curfew. And those two … are they wearing costumes?”

“I think … maybe, I don’t know, maybe it’s a theme wedding, or they’re like … circus performers or something,” Mindy said distractedly, noticing that actually, all these people seemed to have a really good excuse for being here. Young, drunk, weird. She wondered how she and Danny looked. What was their excuse? “So … what about, you know, this couple right here?”

“Right here?”

Before Danny could really answer her, a woman with a clipboard came out.

“Castellano-Lahiri?”

“Yeah.” Danny raised his hand, and they both stood up.

The woman looked at Danny, then at Mindy, and then back at Danny. “Is this a green-card marriage? You’re going to need some additional paperwork if that’s—”

“Okay, that’s rude. I’m as American as you are, lady, and I am much hotter than he is.”

The woman smiled tightly. “Okay! It’s going to be a couple minutes, and then you’re up next. I’ll just take your paperwork now, and when the older hippie couple comes out, you can go in. Good luck!”

Mindy smiled nervously at Danny, who was jangling the pair of rings that, unlike the license, had literally come out of a vending machine. She wondered if they were going to turn their fingers green, and if they did, if that was a bad sign.

“So. This is it,” he said.

“Yeah, this is it.” She smiled brightly at him even as her heart was pounding, and he smiled back at her.

“You look really nice by the way. Really … beautiful.”

Mindy patted her hair down, wishing she’d been able to do something more to tame it. At least she’d been able to brush her teeth and fix her makeup in a bathroom.

“You do too. Nice, I mean.” She ran her hand down the sleeve of shirt. He was wearing a dark button-down with jeans, more basic and monochromatic than she’d usually go for, but it worked for him. “Handsome.”

“Yeah?” He lit up at her compliment, making him even more so, which seemed like overkill.

“Yeah, you know you look good. You don’t need me to tell you that.”

“You never have before,” he said. “Unless of course you want something.”

The words were light, but they made her feel weird inside. Guilty, almost, and she didn’t know what for.

“You okay?” he asked, his eyes darting skittishly around her face. “I mean, all of this, is this okay with you?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay,” she said quickly. “Why, are you okay?” She looked at him intently, trying to read him for signs he was going to back out of this. He looked nervous and sweaty, but that was how he usually looked.

“Yeah, I uh … just checking. I guess this is nothing compared to what your people do.” She raised her eyebrows at him, and he clarified after a beat: “You know, the arranged marriages.”

“Danny, for the last time,  _ my people _ are from  _ Boston _ .”

“I know, I just try to forget.” He half-grinned at her and she punched him lightly in the arm, because he was clearly just trying to get a rise out of her.

“You know, your little baseball rivalry is no Montagues vs. Capulets story. Anyway, if it was, that would be romantic.”

“There’s nothing romantic about a couple of dumb kids killing themselves over a crush because their parents can’t get along.”

“Hey. Romeo and Juliet is one of the classic romances of all time.”

“It’s one of the classic tragedies of all time.”

Before she had a chance to argue with him, the door to the chapel swung open. The most recently married couple burst through, trailing braids and the stench of incense, and then the wedding woman popped her head out again. “We’re ready for you,” she said.

Mindy quickly pressed her finger to Danny’s lips. “Stop talking, and get in there, before I change my mind.”

“Wait, what?”

“Go!” She pushed him lightly, and he went through the door, glancing back at her quickly before he disappeared.

“Did he look weird to you?” Mindy said to a girl who was standing nearby with a clipboard. Her name tag said Janice.

“Don’t know what he usually looks like,” Janice said, shrugging. “I guess he looked a little sweaty?”

“He always looks sweaty. That’s his thing,” Mindy said.

“I wouldn’t worry about it. Probably just a little case of pre-wedding jitters,” Janice said soothingly, and Mindy nodded.

“That’s normal, right? You probably see a lot of people like that.”

“Not really,” Janice said. “Most people who come through here are too inebriated, to be honest.”

Mindy felt a pang of envy. What she wouldn’t give for a pint of vodka right now—not that she needed vodka to want to marry Danny. But now that it was imminent, the panic was starting to set in, along with a fair dose of deja vu. Another thrown-together wedding that felt like it just as easily might not happen. Another last-minute freakout while she tried to sort out what she wanted. And it wasn’t that she didn’t want this, but why was it happening so fast? Why didn’t she know what Danny was thinking?

She had the sudden urge to sneak out to the fire escape, but there wasn’t one of those here, and it was making her feel antsy. She just really needed a few minutes on a fire escape or someplace to talk things out with her best friend. If she could just have that, everything would be better. But her best friend wasn’t here right now.

Or rather—she realized with a jolt that Gwen was nowhere near the person she wanted to talk to most right now—he  was here. He was on the other side of that door, waiting for her, and the only way to get to him at this moment was down that aisle.

It was good that the person she wanted to get a hotel with as quickly as possible was the same one she wanted to talk to when she was freaking out, wasn’t it? Those were two main things a spouse should be. And for him to be ridiculously attractive and smart and also surprisingly thoughtful—

Like a sign, the door flew open just then. All she had to calm down enough to walk through it, and she could have everything she ever wanted.

She took a few tentative steps, clutching the tacky little bouquet of fake roses and baby breath that the chapel had provided. When she looked up, she saw Danny standing at the other end of the aisle, looking serious and devastatingly handsome. She couldn’t even imagine how good he would look if they were doing this later, after he’d had a chance to rent a decent tux.

But for whatever reason, this wasn’t happening later. It was happening now—she was literally walking toward him—and did it matter whether it was sooner or later? It seemed more important that it was happening at all, right?

As she reached him, she smiled, but he stared back at her, serious and stony-faced. She tilted her head at him inquiringly, and he blinked and lifted his eyebrows like he was shooting the silent question right back at her. She shrugged slightly, unsure what they were even talking about.

The minister cleared his throat, and Mindy noticed his name tag said Bill. Ministers wore name tags? She’d have to ask Danny about that later. “Are you ready?”

Danny looked at Mindy first. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s get this party started,” she said brightly to cover her nerves, then realized that maybe sounded too flip. “I mean … this very serious religious ceremony.”

““Dearly Beloved,” began the minister. “We are gathered here today at Big Bubba’s Wedding Chapel of Dreams, in front of these witnesses—er, our wedding coordinator, Brenda—to join the hands of Mandy and Donny—”

“Mindy and Danny,” Danny interjected.

The guy squinted at the paper he was reading from. “I’m pretty sure it says Mandy and Donny here.”

“I haven’t even decided whether I’m going to change my last name, much less my first,” Mindy quipped, but nobody laughed, especially not Danny. He looked pale and strange, and as a friend, she had the impulse to ask him if he really wanted to do this, but as the person he was marrying she shoved the thought away and told the minister, “It’s definitely Mindy and Danny. Always has been, always will be.”

“I guess you would know,” the minister— Bill —said brightly, then began again. “We are here to join Mindy and Danny, in holy matrimony, a contract of commitment not to be entered into lightly or unadvisedly, but reverently and solemnly. Unless of course, you’re in Vegas.” He paused to wink at them. “We have been pretty easy annulments here.”

“Excuse me?” Mindy said. “That’s not—no—We’re very serious. We take this very seriously. Right, Danny?”

She tried to catch Danny’s eyes, to get some sort of subtle confirmation that they were still on the same page here, but he was too busy glaring at the minister.

“Are you even a real minister? Is this even a real—who ordained you?”

“Of course I’m a real minister. I was ordained online through the Universal Life Church.”

“You were ordained online,” Danny echoed. “Okay. Great. Did you check all the right boxes?”

“Danny.” Mindy reached for his elbow.

“What do you mean, did I check all the right boxes?”

“You said you did it online. I’ve heard it’s important to check all the right boxes.”

Mindy shook her head at Danny trying to get him to stop and shot an apologetic look at Bill. He was terrible at this, but he seemed nice enough. “It’s okay. You can just continue.”

“You have to check all the right boxes,” Danny insisted, “or you can think you have something when you really don’t.”

“Danny, what boxes?” Mindy asked him quietly. Was he losing it? “Not every website is like making a hotel reservation. I’m sure it’s fine. He’s probably done plenty of these. How many wedding ceremonies have you performed?”

“‘I’ve only been here about a month,” Bill admitted, to Mindy’s chagrin. “A few hundred probably.”

“See! A few hundred. That’s a lot, right? That’s a lot. So … are you okay, Danny?”

He blinked at her a few times, shook his head, and then nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m fine. You can … just keep going.”

“Tough crowd tonight!” the minister said as Mindy watched Danny uncertainly. “Anywho. Where was I? At this time, if you have words you have prepared to say to each other, you can say those words now. Donny?”

“It’s  _ Danny _ ,” Danny said forcefully, looking like he was about to go off on the guy again.

Mindy had to grab his hand and force him to look at her. Who cared about the most annoying minister of all time? She cared about him, and what he was going to say to her right now. She looked at him expectantly, and he stared back at her, stricken and silent, while all the doubts and questions she’d been pushing back all night flooded her mind.

“Danny? Do you have anything you want to say to me?”

Danny stared at her for a long moment and then looked away from her toward Bill. “Um … we didn’t really have a chance to write anything,” he mumbled. “Don’t you have a script you’re supposed to read from? Something official?”

“Very well then.” Bill cheerfully continued the ceremony, but Mindy barely noticed as she looked at Danny, feeling as if she was really seeing him for the first time since he showed up at her door. He looked so pale. And tired, with flecks of red in his eyes from too little sleep or too much whiskey or if she knew him, and she did, both. But more than that, he looked …

Someone pressed a ring into her hand, and distractedly she took Danny’s hand in hers, noticing the resistance as she pushed it over his knuckle. She took the opportunity to look into his eyes, searching there for the answers she’d been trying to find all night. He looked … scared. He looked scared.

Dimly, she registered the clamminess of Danny’s hands and the coldness of the band as he did the same for her, as little things that she hadn’t put together before, because she’d been too swept up in the idea of what was happening and hadn’t really wanted to put them together, started clicking into place.

She thought of him hesitating in the closet to ask the question until she impatiently blurted it out herself. She remembered that he hadn’t said he loved her until she asked, and he still hadn’t said the words himself.

She remembered him giving a lot of reasons for doing this that had nothing to do with her.

Starting to feel woozy, Mindy focused on staying upright and repeating the lines that were being fed to her. As if from a distance, she heard the low murmur of Danny’s voice after hers, but her mind was whirring, one bubble-bursting, champagne-splattering realization after another.

When Danny had shown up, rainsoaked and romantic, to interrupt her heartbreak, to whisk her away to a quick and easy romantic ending, it had all felt too good to be real.

Because it wasn’t. It wasn’t real.

“I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

When he leaned in toward her, she turned her cheek reflexively, and his mouth slid awkwardly across it.

Without looking back at him, she dropped his hands and took off back down the aisle at full speed, alone.


End file.
